If you’re like me and watched from a distance leaked builds of Windows 7 fly past like water balloons in a water balloon fight, then the time to join the fun is now. The highly anticipated release candidate (RC) build of Windows 7 has been leaked and its authenticity is entirely undisputed. First looks reveal nothing significantly new or different, but if you’ve been wanting to get a vibe of how far Windows 7 has come since the public beta, especially performance, this is the build to get.

For those of you who want to play along at home, pay your favorite “content hub” a visit. The full build string is “7100.0.090421-1700” and the x86 (32-bit) ISO coming in at a easily manageable 2.35GB (2,530,975,744 bytes). Furthermore to check if your file has been tampered with, you can easily compare the file hash of your x86 (32-bit) ISO file with HashTab against the following.

@Fahd: A couple months ago I spent a whole day trying to get Windows 7 to install to a USB. I got as far as the boot splash screen but it never actually booted. Somewhere during the boot process it fails.

He might not be wrong yet.
Because “if” there is anything new coming in the UI side of things,
It will be in the RTM branch, NOT the RC fork.
This is build 7100 (RC) – Its been out of date for a bit already.

Paul even on his site has screenshots of 7106.
So don’t expect the new UI in the old RC build.

Anyway, just to make it clear, i’m not saying there will be anything new in the UI.
But you can’t say that its not true yet, coz you guys miss read what he was saying.

But anyone with half a brain will figure out that theres no gonna be any OMFG changes in the UI as they have spent ages doing tiny tweaks to the interface as the builds have been progressing.
Which you just wouldn’t do if you were gonna replace it.

@RF: The only comparison I can make from the same hardware I’ve installed it to is with the beta 7000 build, and from that performance is obviously much improved. However I’ve seen reports that people has been enjoying improved performance since build 7077 so I don’t think there is much difference between this RC and recently leaked builds.

Hey Long, have heard anything about UI changes coming to 7 or is this it? If there are no changes, I wonder what the so called surprises are that Microsoft is holding back. If you are not under NDA any guesses?

I’m quite disappointed Microsoft ignored such a highly ranked win7taskforce request and trivial matter like updating all the old icons littered about windows some going as far back as win95. All the oldies are still there seriously I would love to hear the MS reason on a release were the focus was fit & finish that something like this was decided not worth doing.

@insomniac, i agree with your assessment. I think there is nothing wrong with excluding certain features from RC build, public testing. If, and it is a big if, there are any new features I doubt it would alter the existing functionality of the RC build. It would likely be an additive feature and tested via a private test group. For example, if Microsoft wanted to deliver some new experiences in Media Center. In that scenario, there is no back compatibility testing needed…so the risk is minimized. And if the feature fails private testing, then that you don’t get alot of backlash for not including something that no one knew about to begin with.

If your hashes are from the torrented version, you simply cannot safely assume it has not been tampered with. Rather, you would be more sane to assume it has been tampered with – until you can verify these hashes with someone from the source (ie Microsoft).

While 7100 is technically newer from the standpoint of bug fixes etc, it is from the forked RC branch which means that the codebase it was “stabilized” from is actually older than the 710X+ builds. So its not exactly a clear cut case of newer or older: code older, build newer. 😛

*I* for one am going to wait until the build is released officially, as far as i can tell, there isn’t a downside to waiting.

I suppose It’s possible that a new UI will be introduced into the RTM build but it seems unlikely Microsoft would fly that out the hanger without any large-scale (external) testing. When Whistler was cooking in Microsoft’s stew pot the final UI (Luna) was introduced in the final beta, just prior to the RC stage. Before that XP looked nothing like it did upon release, using a never-to-be-seen-again theme called Watercolor.

I upgraded my build 7000 to 7100 like this:
Copy the ISO contents to a folder on your hard drive.
Go into the sources folder there and right-click on cversion.ini and choose edit.
Change the 7077.0 to 7000.0.
Then install from the hard drive folder.
Good luck.

didn’t give in to download one of those leaked versions on the interweb but instead managed to get the official public RC2 release today.

Installed it and gave it a quick test drive. My observations:

the good:
– It works as quickly as Windows XP inside a virtual machine.
– Many things have been re-arranged to make easier accessible… eg: Screen resolution is now a right click away.

the bad:
– how in gods name Microsoft continuously manages make simple things so convoluted is beyond me. I think Windows 7 in essencene has almost exactly the same feature of OSX (not including the iLife suite) to serve as a basic tool box for day to day computer work. Yet Microsoft still manages to make everything so convoluted it’s actually quite amazing. Just take a look at the Start Menu. There just doesn’t seem to be much logic behind what’s listed on the left hand side (various programs) and on the right hand side (various programs, docs, config screens).
– I have spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out were IIS is. Turns out it wasn’t installed by default. No problem. However, after installation I now don’t seem to be able to find were the bloody IIS console is. I actually know it’s called the IIS console yet I still can’t find it. Tried to type in help and still no luck??? What’s worse after typing “IIS console” in the help search box it tells me to check my spelling.

Why is this bad? Well, for some reason Apple managed to implement this feature within three clicks from the desktop: System Preferences -> Sharing -> Web Sharing with a comments that reads: “Web Sharing allows user of other computers to view web pages in the Sites and folders on this computer”

It it too much too ask to make things simple?

the ugly:
– While Windows 7 is a huge improvement over Vista it does seem like Vista really just a Beta version. I actually went out and spend money on a full version of Vista Ultimate. In many ways I feel cheated. Microsoft never delivered on the Ultimate promises and Vista was plagued by so many problems I went back to Windows XP. Now I am expected to fork out more money for a new version that essentially is what Vista should have been come… do they really think I am that stupid?
– Multiple versions of Windows 7? WTF, haven’t you guys learnt anything? Just do one version, sell it at the same price as OSX and this baby blossom.

I don’t know about you guys, but I found quiet some important bugs in Windows 7 RC. :/

* Moving pined items up/down in the Start Menu, can make the the recent program list disappear all by itself.
* Browsing item by item in the Control Panel can result to an error in the panel “failed to load”, and then Windows Explorer stop responding.
* Start Menu search can’t find panels added by drivers (sound card/video card), however it works when looking for other things, and within the Control Panel window search bar.
* When DPI is set 150%, IE8 and Firefox crashes when you start typing in any field. (probably affect other software)
* XP Mode is not as advertise 100% compatibility, as when you run software that require input other then keyboard/mouse (ie: microphone), it can’t use it, which render the software useless.
* Windows XP compatibility always run applications as Admin. What if I don’t want to run it as admin? Why have the check box to allow you to run the application as admin? (I have an application that works under Vista, but not under Win7… shame.)
* Help icon in the mobility panel (Win+X) is still from Windows XP.
* Char Map text in the status bar is not aligned properly vertically.
* Char Map dropdown box (the one you use to select a font), is not properly centered vertically
* Windows Journal.. oh boy… most icons are badly drawn, and the “zoom page” drop down box is miss aligned going over a line separator.
* “Phone and Modem” Control Panel, dates since Windows 95. It’s not even using Aero buttons.
* Blurry Recycle bin icon in the right click menu on the recycle bin icon (when enabled).
* Disk loading cursor dates from Windows 95.
* Using Windows Standard theme, the crumb-bar (address bar) section are smaller then there field.
* Using Windows Standard theme, on the start menu, the blue cancel (X) button that appears next to the search bar when you perform a search is smaller than the search icon.
* Tool tip on “Minimize”, “Maximize/Restore”, and “Close” buttons on windows is still using Classic Windows style.
* When expending the “Add gadget” panel by clicking on “Show details”, the panel gives this vibrate feel (the window is not drawn properly make it jump during animation)

Feels like missing feature:
You know on the Start Menu, you have 2 items Windows Media Player 12, and Sticky Notes, where it can open up to the left of the start menu to offer some quick actions.. well this is totally incomplete, making it useless.
Look at Sticky note, you have “New Note”… that’s it. What is the point? That is what it does by default when you click on the “Sticky Note”. How about show the list of notes written down?
For Windows Media Player 12, why not have my playlists, and/or “play video” and “play DVD” when a DVD movie is inserted? Anything to make it useful.

@tom,
On your ugly note:
– No, you got what you paid for. If you did not like it, then it’s your problem for not trying out the trial version of Vista.
If you find your self cheated, Windows XP, which is the “should have been of Windows 2000”, came out about 1 YEAR after. Now that IS bad. Windows 98 is the “should have been of Windows 95”. It’s always like this (except for Win ME). The first version places the foundations, the second fortify, optimized the foundation and develop on it. Windows 9 will be the “should have been of Windows 8”. You did not get Vista for it’s feature, consider yourself to have so many new things. Windows XP kernel is based on Win2000, which is based on WinNT4, which is based on the 1993 WinNT3, before the internet. Wonder why a 8 year old kid can make a virus under XP? well that is why. Security was kinda the last thing Microsoft had in mind when making NT3. XP is a pile of patches over NT3, so bad that form what I see in XP, I don’t even think the developers found themselves in the code. Vista was desperately needed.

TO ALL OF YOU WHO THINK WINDOWS 7 IS FAKE, WINDOWS 7 IS NOT FAKE! MY COMPUTER TEACHER IS ONE OF THE TESTERS! HE SAID WINDOWS 7 IS WAY BETTER ALREADY THEN VISTA. AND 7 JUST CAME OUT!!!!!! I WOULD TOTALLY RECOMMEND 7!!!!